How To Fire An Employee

When you recruit an employee you rarely think about terminating them in the future. However a great employee may someday have issues and stop performing in the way that you want and originally hired them for. Firing an employee is not fun for anyone but it is a necessary part of running a successful company and you are going to have to do it a few times in your career. Look at some of the formal steps that you need to take when it comes to firing an employee. You can find some policies online that you can use to help you create a strong one for your organization. You need to go through the right type of legal procedures in order to create a good termination policy in order to protect your company in the event that you need to let someone go and they try to sue your company. Let's explore some great tips that will help you to fire an employee.

Have a Policy
As we briefly talked about you need to have some type of policy in place. Use this to help you cite examples of violation when you are firing the employee. Having a policy that you can turn to is a great way to help you terminate them correctly.

HR
When you need to fire someone it is a good idea to have a HR person present. You need to have a witness in the room for the firing in order to protect you and the company. HR individuals may be in charge of the formal firing process and you will be there to provide documents to the employee for the reason why they are being fired. Having another person present is a great benefit to you as you are firing a person and it does make it easier on you to go through the process.

Termination Documents
You need to provide the employee with certain termination documents. A letter explaining their termination is one of the things that you need to have. Federal law requires you to give the employee a statement about reasons why they may be fired when they are initially hired and they need to sign this. Make a copy and give it back to them when you fire them and then provide them with other documents that show what things they violated or did that lead to their termination. Gather all the documents you can and keep them in a file as you will need to cite them from time to time. You may have had several meetings with the employees in the past about their behavior. These are some of the documents that you need to keep and cite when you fire the employee. Depending upon what your policies are you will have to give the employee some things like a severance package. HR can help you with this information as you are trying to make the process end correctly.

Prepare Yourself
It is not easy to fire someone so you need to prepare yourself for it. You need to keep your cool as the employee may become irate or very emotional during the firing process. Have a quiet room where you let them go and make sure you have security if you need to have them escorted from the building. Make sure you are in the right mental state to fire another person because it is hard on you mentally. After you fire them you might want to take some time off and go for a walk and just relax, recharge, and refocus and get back to work.